(42nd Entry) On a different note…

I’m going to continue on with my quest to talk about what gives me meaning… I want to talk about what got me to where I am today, but also talk about what’s current in my life.

I’ve mentioned before that I’m helping my parent’s business out in Mexico. Back in October we opened a factory that does grabado. Grabado is carving on glass which can be done in different patterns. In Mexico City it’s known as Pepita, an art form influenced by the French. As of Monday I will have five employees and the maestro, the teacher. Two of the five employees are disabled. (I talk about my goals in the Mission Statement.)

We’re limited at the current time on the types of disabilities that we can hire due to transportation issues. There is no transportation in the town of San Miguel de Allende for individuals in wheel chairs. Plus, our office/factory is located 10 miles out in the country which makes it an even greater issue.

We have six stations at the current time for production. I hope to add to this shortly. The new machines will be made so that they can be used for individuals in wheel chairs or for those that stand. My goal is to have 20 individuals by the end of the year producing and at least 14 disabled individuals.

This sounds wonderful… Unfortunately, I thought it would be much easier than the reality is turning out to be. Things often turn out more complicated than I think. I think because it’s my dream and something that might be able to help others that it will be easy. It should be easy!

Where to go from here…

Last summer one of our business partners casually said… “We’re having production problems and you (me) have this desire to do something with the issue of disability, so let’s just open our own factory and hire disabled individuals.” Sounds great! Doesn’t it? It sounded good to me.

We found a maestro. We told him about our goals and he sounded very interested and we felt that he bought into the idea of hiring disabled individuals. In October we opened the doors and began producing. The first thing that became apparent is that the learning curve for employees was going to be much greater than we were led to believe. OK… I adjusted to this and realized that the investment would be greater than I expected. This was not insurmountable, so we continued.

More to follow: